Dropping the pucks (and the ball)

Sorry, Pictou County Junior Scotians — the 2017 championship you won in front of 1,700 fans didn’t make the cut.

That provincial title won by the Midget AAA Selects female hockey team last year? Nope, it wasn’t important enough to get your team commemorated on one of the 150 pucks now on display in a case at the Pictou County Wellness Centre, each of them detailing some of the great hockey moments in the county’s history.

Tied to Canada 150 celebrations, the idea put forth by local sports historian Corey Hartling, was an excellent one, and the display itself is very nice, except there are some glaring omissions – the two mentioned above being among them — and yes, the project was put together after those two events occurred.

Let the bitchery begin (oh that’s right, it already has).

Almost everyone who cares will find something to take issue with in cases like this, and every parent thinks their kid’s big moment deserves a mention, but if I’m the Scotians, I’m thinking “Seriously? We don’t rate, but St. John’s Academy’s senior high championship in 1951 does?”

The Westville Mavericks, who won the final Pictou County High School Hockey League championship in 2003 before NRHS and NNEC opened later that year (it was also the only time Westville High School ever won it), deserved a mention also — if for no other reason than for its historical significance in local high school sporting lore.

What about the Peewee AA Female Selects, who played a provincial championship game in 2016 that went to seven overtimes, possibly the longest hockey game in the history of Nova Scotia? That has to make the list.

Oh, and Stellarton’s Blayre Turnbull has played in a world championship tournament with Canada’s national women’s team. She also has this commitment next month to a little thing called the Winter Olympic Games.

The aforementioned did not make the cut this time around, but maybe in another 150 years they’ll get their due.

Non-sports thoughts of the week

• Women were making the news this week in Pictou County.

First, a woman was abducted in front of Giant Tiger but it turned out she wasn’t.

Then, a woman allegedly burned down a house in Trenton on purpose. Not good.

After that, Pictou West MLA Karla MacFarlane had to become interim leader of the provincial Tories after Jamie Baillie was asked to step down for alleged inappropriate behaviour of some sort.

Baillie will truly be missed. By almost nobody. Frankly, I wouldn’t mind if MacFarlane ran for leadership – she can’t keep a cardboard/duct tape boat from sinking, but she seems smart and nice enough, which by my own reckoning is a good place to start.

I don’t know much about the woman because following politics too closely makes my head spin (I have enough on my plate with the Cleveland Browns), but she seems to be a soft C conservative, so it could be worse. A lot worse.